McWilliams’ World

I just finished playing through Jade Empire – an original flavored Xbox title I’ve had in my possession for over a year and never played.  Why? I have too many other games to play!

General Info

I’m not going to go too in depth about the game as you can find many other, well written reviews other places, but just want to give my two bits.

Jade Empire is an original title by Bioware. The same guys that brought you the most excellent Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (I loved that game too, which reminds me, I have to play through KOTOR II one of these days). The setting is ancient China where everything is very fanciful, mysterious, and astounding. You start off choosing your character of varying combat classes (balanced, speed, strength, magic), male and female. I choose to play as the Sprit Monk (an extra character included with the special edition).

The game style is adventure role-playing with real-time combat. You choose your own path through the game making decisions that will affect your outcome. Some choices are minimal, some are far reaching. Conversations are frequent. You don’t have to listen to everything, but it adds to the history, back-story, and furthers the illusion. During these conversations you have the opportunity to respond and during these responses (ether good or bad) your character’s face will change depending on the mood of the response; something I noticed late in the game.

I think it was stated that there were over 20,000 lines of spoken dialog – some characters speak in another tongues other than english. One dig against the game was that they didn’t use accents for the characters. I’d think it’d bring greater credibility to the story if everyone spoke in the proper dialect rather than plain American. Don’t get me wrong, the voice acting is top-notch, but it kind of breaks down the illusion of being in some foreign land when everyone sounds like you’re at home.

Similar to KOTOR or Fable, you have the opportunity to be good or evil depending on how to react to situations or behave toward others. In this case it’s the path of the Open Palm (good) or Closed Fist (bad). I went the way of the Open Palm. Many times in these type of games, I don’t see a major benefit of following the dark path since the outcome has to be generally the same and there’s little motivation to do so – other than just to be bad. I’m still waiting for a game that pushes you to one side or the other. Maybe Fable 2 will do a better job at that.

Each path has it’s own special attributes, rewards, and abilities. Since I did Open Palm, I was rewarded for selfless deeds and humble responses. I was always presented with Closed Fist responses which would have brought instant gratification, but I seemed to be better off going the meek route in the long run. Maybe I’ll play through again and follow the Closed Fist to see what transpires.

Game-play

Throughout the game you’ll learn many styles of combat; martial arts, weapon, magic, transformation, and support. Once thing I realized toward the end of my journey was that I somewhat wasted a lot of experience points on styles I barely used, but you just never know how that new style’s going to help out later on. I felt compelled to level up my styles to some extent. I managed to get one or two styles up to around level 10 wile others were in the sixes and sevens.

You can have 4 styles mapped to your d-pad and swap them out at any time if whatever you’re fighting isn’t responding to what you’re using. This comes in handy when fighting ghosts or any other host of baddies. Each style has a standard, heavy and area attack. And with that, you have the opportunity to fire off a Harmonic Combo. This usually starts with a magic or support style and then quickly switching to a martial style. A timer shows under your opponent in which you have to complete the combo. Combos can rage from petrifying someone then smashing them to bits, or shocking them and then splatter (and I mean splatter) them all of the place (very fun). There are many. I didn’t really catch on till the latter half of my play through which was somewhat of a bummer, it would have been handy.

A gripe about the game-play was that switching styles wasn’t too exact. There were a number of times where I found myself spanking the direction of the style I wanted to switch to and it’d either stay where it was or switch to something else. That was a bit frustrating - especially in the heat of some battles where you’re swarmed with HUGE beasts and just about every style you try, they’re immune to attack from.

Another dig would be that my character missed a lot when fighting. I’d paralyze someone, and then try to whack them, but only to find I was a bit too far away and by the time I managed to move closer the effect wore off or my guy wasn’t facing the right direction. Sometimes it resulted in my dying and trying again.

You also have Chi (magic) and Focus modes. Your magic styles draw upon your Chi, so you have to manage that carefully if you’re one to use lots of magic (like myself) as Chi can also be used to enhance your martial styles as well as replenish your health. Magic soon became a hot commodity for myself so I’d heap on the Chi when leveling up toward the end of the game. I realized that I needed it more than health or focus.

Focus allows you to go in to slow-mo and decimate your opponents. Only drawback here is that weapons typically draw on focus, so you had to watch that. Although my weapons were fairly good, I didn’t rely on them that much since there did little against ghosts and other things roaming the land.

Beside the mechanics, you have many quests to complete to further your path. Main storyline quests and side quests for miscellaneous people along the way. Each quest has a potential bonus; a power-up, money, or furthering your walk in Open Palm or Closed Fist. I typically took advantage of every quest I could do. You don’t have to, but you usually benefit from doing so.

Graphics

I loved the look of Jade Empire. Bright, colorful, dark, moody all describe the look. I loved the atmosphere. Sometimes it was misty, some forests were spooky. Ghosts or spirits glowed. Just a great looking game.

A note to 360 owners with HD Widescreens; in order to view the game in widescreen format, make sure to reduce your HD output to 480p on the 360. It’s a bit of a pain, but it only takes 5sec. Otherwise, you’ll get the game in 4:3 output.

Closing Thoughts

I thoroughly loved playing Jade Empire. So much, that I may play it again. Not right now since the games way to fresh in my mind, but I could see playing through again and see what the path of the Closed Fist is all about.

I was surprised on how deep and wide Jade Empire is. Many times in the final 10hrs of play I thought I was going to finish up, but the story continued to press on and the little twists in turns to storyline, although somewhat predictable, the method of arriving there was very cool. As I look back at the journey it was amazing to realize the progress that was made in my character.

The only global complaint I had was that I waited so long to play, but I’m glad I was able to play it widescreen and in HD (even if it was in 480p). It’s an experience I won’t soon forget.

I give it a 9 out of 10

[edit: updated with score]

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 11:12 am and is filed under Game Reviews, Xbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.